Lately I've been studying design. The word is a broad one with a lot of meanings, but I have a very specific one in mind. Building useful, elegant solutions is both an art and a science. The scientific part is engineering, and the artistic part is design. Here are a few of the books and magazines I've been reading on the subject that I highly recommend:

You can't learn to design from a book, any more than you can learn writing or music from a book. But in On Writing, Stephen King said that while no amount of teaching will turn a bad writer into a good one or a good writer into a great one, it can turn a good writer into a better one. I expect the same is true of design. I don't expect to ever be a great designer, but I think I'm a good one, and hopefully on my way to becoming a better one.